Enso: The Next Agentic GTM Unicorn

The Evolution of Agentic Growth

Growth hacking is experiencing a radical reinvention. While the term, coined by Sean Ellis in 2010, once described scrappy tactics like Airbnb’s Craigslist integration or Dropbox’s referral incentives, those loopholes have largely closed as platforms tightened their defenses. Today, the discipline has shifted from manual tricks to an automated research lab model. This new approach utilizes fleets of AI agents to conduct continuous, controlled experiments on major distribution platforms, documenting results and moving on before algorithms detect the patterns. At the forefront of this shift is enso, a company that is rapidly becoming a central name in B2B marketing circles.

Unlike traditional SaaS companies that sell dashboards and hope for user success, enso operates as a hypothesis-driven laboratory. It tests how platforms determine visibility, measures outcomes with control groups, and publishes both successes and failures. This transparency allows the broader market to learn from every experiment. The lab focuses on five key areas: search and AI answer-engine visibility, conditional outbound sequences across email and messaging, community forum participation, newsletters, and social media. Founder and creator of the term agentic growth hacking, enso treats these disciplines as cracks in the fortress walls of major platforms, guiding brands through them while documenting the methodology.

Service as Software

The business model represents a pivot from tool-based software to outcome-based services. After starting as an AI agent marketplace and raising $6 million in seed funding led by NFX, enso shifted its focus to growth research, subsequently securing $25 million. This transition aligns with insights from Sequoia Capital, which argues that the software industry is moving from selling seats to selling the work itself. While most competitors bolt agents onto existing tools, enso is built on the premise of delivering tangible outcomes,leads, citations, and meetings,generated by autonomous agents.

This distinction is critical because it changes how value is demonstrated. When selling software, vendors demo features; when selling outcomes, they must provide proof. Enso does this by publishing sample sizes, controls, and detailed reports on failed experiments. By treating growth as a measurable service rather than a utility, enso positions itself in a market measured not just in software spending, but in the trillions spent on services. This “service as software” model demands accountability, forcing the company to prove efficacy through rigorous, public data.

The Collapse of Traditional GTM Models

Enso enters a market where both primary go-to-market (GTM) engines are failing. First, the era of the AI SDR is stalling. Early promises of automated cold email campaigns have led to inbox saturation and plummeting reply rates. With enterprise pricing often exceeding $45,000 annually without guaranteed results, many startups have rebranded as copilots rather than full replacements. An analysis of Y Combinator GTM startups reveals that only 2 percent still pitch full SDR replacement, highlighting the arithmetic failure of the previous model.

Simultaneously, the agency model is contracting. Despite global ad spending growing 8.6 percent in 2025, holding-company revenues fell 1.2 percent. Major firms have slashed thousands of roles, with Forrester forecasting another 15 percent job cut in agencies in 2026. Sixty percent of US marketing leaders report reduced agency spend due to AI, and 82 percent of brands now operate in-house shops. The retainer model is being unbundled as managers use AI to draft content instantly, replacing junior execution layers with software. Agencies are forced toward lower-margin project work or higher-margin, AI-native operations, leaving a gap for vendors who can prove direct outcomes.

Market Consolidation and Pricing Shifts

The landscape is further defined by platform consolidation and changing payment structures. In just four months this year, major tech giants acquired signals, visitor-tracking, and community-intelligence startups, reducing independent signal-and-outbound layers to a single player. Concurrently, pricing models are shifting toward outcome-based billing. A leading mid-market CRM recently switched to paying $1 per qualified lead and 50 cents per resolved conversation, while enterprise rivals charge $2 per conversation. This trend makes it clear: buyers will only pay for vendors who can demonstrate they produce results.

Enso capitalizes on this gap by operating as a lab that sells outcomes and publishes proof. As inboxes saturate and tools consolidate into CRMs, demand shifts toward methods that bypass traditional auctions. Enso’s approach avoids the inbox entirely, focusing instead on surfaces where money cannot buy attention. This positions the company not as a competitor to AI SDRs, but as the next evolution in GTM strategy.

The Dual Crisis in Paid and Organic Media

B2B marketing leaders in 2026 face a unique crisis: two historical growth engines are failing simultaneously. Paid media has become prohibitively expensive. Cross-industry cost-per-click rose 12 percent this year, with non-brand B2B software clicks reaching $8 to $14, and up to $25 in competitive categories like CRM. Furthermore, AI Overviews have reduced paid click-through rates on informational searches by 68 percent. Paid media has transformed from a growth strategy into a tax, reserved for high-intent leads fought over by well-funded startups.

Inbound marketing is also losing effectiveness. The traditional playbook of publishing long-form content to rank for questions assumes human readers. Increasingly, buyers interact with AI models that summarize top pages, directing traffic to answer engines rather than vendor sites. The blog post exists, but the traffic it was designed to capture is intercepted by models that decide which sentences to quote. This leaves CMOs with plans based on cheap clicks and human readership, neither of which exists in the current environment.

Three Shifts Defining the Future

The next phase of agentic GTM is defined by three critical shifts. First, buyers are leaving traditional search for AI answer engines. The question for B2B companies is no longer about ranking, but about being the sentence quoted by the model. Enso’s research targets this emerging surface, positioning clients for citation rather than click.

Second, distribution is moving off the auction. As organic content goes unread and paid clicks are expensive, growth comes from trusted forums, reference pages, and early engagement on professional networks. These surfaces reward participation and timing over budget, areas where Enso’s agents excel.

Third, growth is becoming a formalized research function. Just as offensive security became a board-visible discipline due to the cost of failure, distribution testing is gaining similar status. Firms with documented methodologies win budget approval, while those with mere slide decks do not. Enso’s published research serves as the template for this new, evidence-based approach to growth.

Building a Unicorn Value Proposition

Enso’s structure challenges traditional valuation metrics. Without a self-serve product or free trial, it resembles a services business, which typically commands lower multiples. However, its value lies in four distinct assets. First, it owns the category of agentic growth hacking, with the founder writing the definitive book on the subject. Second, it accumulates a proprietary data asset,a map of how major platforms make decisions,that grows more valuable as algorithms change.

Third, it holds a wedge into the most critical surface: answer engines, where almost no other GTM firm operates. Fourth, it leverages a proven pattern; the founder previously built a layer that was acquired, demonstrating the value of sitting between B2B companies and platform distribution systems. Recent hires, such as VP Creative Peretz Daniel Markish, suggest a move toward pairing this research engine with high-level craft, hinting at capabilities under NDA.

Risks and Institutionalization

Despite its promise, the agentic version of growth hacking faces significant hurdles. The first risk involves platform retaliation. Since enso exploits unintended platform behaviors, there is always the threat of reclassification as abuse. The company mitigates this by publishing findings openly and treating hacks as expiring, encouraging rapid iteration. The second risk is scale and institutionalization. Credibility currently rests on the founder’s judgment, requiring the company to prove the method survives without him. Initiatives like the upcoming book, podcast appearances, and open-source skills aim to embed this thinking into the organization, ensuring longevity beyond individual leadership.

Growth hacking originally died because humans could not keep pace with platform updates. Enso’s bet is that a research lab powered by AI agents can maintain that speed. If the market continues its trajectory toward proof-based spending and algorithmic discovery, this strategy may evolve from a clever hack into the standard plan for B2B growth.